There’s no easy way to sum up the events in my life lately other than by numbering them because if I even attempted to put them in narrative form the jumbled mess would betray my ability to use paragraphs and then my former English professors would turn over in their graves (oh, I hope they’re not dead, but surely I’m forgiven the euphemism) and then take away my college degree. Then, after ripping my diploma from my hands, they’d send me up to an innocuous little day spa where they would give me tiny red pills in a paper cup and give me paint brushes and magenta paint to draw out my feelings. Excuse the little daydream there, folks. I have a big day in front of me today and there is a puddle of weirdness at my feet because I am closing on my new house in a few hours. This is so huge for me because I had to put on my big girl panties and it’s been an insane ride for the last two months. On with the numbered list!

1. I spend an inordinate amount of time in our two art classrooms or talking with art students because they are, without a doubt, some of the hippest cats out there. I was speaking to one of them, let’s call her Chloe, and she was talking about a substitute teacher who walked past us in the hallway. “He is bizarre, that guy. I think he has ties to a mafia-type related family but in a gay way. Like a rainbow-clad grifter.” I know that when she said that to me my face contorted into a mix of awe and confusion that she would describe him like that. But then she added, “Yeah, I know this because my dad is gay and they’re friends. But my dad isn’t in the mafia. He’s just gay. Those are two totally different things.” Never let it be said that students won’t tell you EVERYTHING. My whole face must read, “Tell me all your secrets. ALL OF THEM.”

2. In the event that I could sneak this next thing right in here and not have you think that it is an emergency situation (which is why I purposely didn’t put this one as number one) I will just quickly say that my dad had a heart attack on Friday and he is just fine. We have spoken every day since then on the phone and he insisted and demanded and pulled out the BECAUSE I’M YOUR FATHER card and told me that I was to continue packing up my house to move tomorrow and Saturday (hey, friends, just show up to help – you know where to go) and not go up to Chicago to see him in the hospital. He said I couldn’t do anything anyway (he must have forgotten about my magical, healing powers to fetch ice chips and fluff pillows) and that I was, in no uncertain terms, supposed to get off my course to moving to my new house. He is so damn stubborn and I am grateful he hasn’t passed any of that on to his children. Bless him for that.

3. The school year is coming to a close and it’s very interesting to me how things just come out of nowhere when you think you won’t be seeing your co-workers and friends for the summer. For instance, several people told me recently that they thought that all year long I was having an affair with a married co-worker and before I could even get offended and all crazy on them I decided to laugh it off. This isn’t the first time I’ve had a friendship with a male that other people were uncomfortable with and I can’t help it if I’m that interesting to gossip about! You know it’s hard being this fascinating and spectacular all the time. In fact, it’s downright exhausting. Why, just last night while living my fabulous lifestyle I heated up an Apple Blossom dessert and covered it in caramel sauce and called that dinner. Then I watched “Transformers” on television with my 15-year old son and we watched the rain cover the backyard and basement. RIVETING, I TELL YOU. All the while, I was dialing up phone numbers of people with whom I’m supposedly having affairs and we told fart jokes and had belching contests. Really, people.

4. So, the person I’m supposedly having an affair with (honestly, I can barely type that without laughing at the thought) (not because he’s not a lovely person, he is! but no, just no, absolutely no) (when he reads this he is going to kick my ass) was asking me how my dad was doing and I admitted that on Saturday afternoon I started to kind of lose my shit and had to call some friends for help. I sent this mass text to my tribe and told them what was happening and asked if anyone could come over and help me pack because the keys to my car were in my hand and I wanted desperately to drive to the hospital to see my dad. One of the things I’m horrible at is asking friends for help. Usually, I just take it all in, turn it into a stressball, try desperately to score some feel-good drugs like Xanax from my friends, and then weep from the fatigue of trying to solve all my problems myself.

Me: I called my tribe this weekend for some help. I’m proud of myself for sucking it up, putting my pride to the side, and asking friends to come rescue me.

Mr. Not Having An Affair: You’re tribe? You didn’t call me. Why am I not in your tribe?

Me: Because you’ve never even been to my house.

Mr. Not Having An Affair: So I have to be in your house to be in your tribe?

Me: Well, yeah. That’s how this works. We befriend one another, we get close and share stuff, and then you become a part of my tribe.

Mr. Not Having An Affair: That’s stupid.

Me: You are welcome to get in my tribe. First, we see a chick flick. Then, you bring a bottle of my favorite wine over to my house. There’s some burning of candles in there and some dancing around in your underwear in my backyard, too, but we can get to that after the wine.

Mr. Not Having An Affair: This is good information to know.

I think that when he said that last thing he was probably wondering if I mixed medicines in a lethal combination that would make me try to tear off his face and wear it as a mask while wandering around in a misty existence carrying enormous knitting needles. Or something like that. If you’re a part of my tribe, you’d understand that to be the most coherent and normal sentence I’ve ever written. If you’re in my tribe, that didn’t scare you.

5. This morning, my friend Chad and I were conversing via the wicked, evil, privacy-invading Facebook. We were having way too much fun, but it was this thing that he wrote that made me start convulsing with laughter: “I just learned about the diva cup I’ll have you know. I thought it was like the Stanley cup for drag queen hockey.” Chad needs his own radio show.

6. And finally, these are the top 5 texts I’ve received just this week. Some of them are so funny I consider making that a weekly blog post because I am a lazy blogger they crack me up:

Penis-enhancing drug emails never get old. It’s like they can see my small penis all the way from there.

I’m pretty big in the Congo, which sounds like a good thing but if you put a map in front of me I would have a hard time finding it. I mean, sure, Africa and all.

I am not getting enough cinnamon rolls in my diet.

Whatever it is, I’m pretty sure I get to call Yahtzee and win the entire game of life. Well, Life is another game, but you know what I mean. Heh. I want to play Yahtzee now.

Reality is a little too real right now. Eat your heart out, reality tv whores.

7. I’m not going to do a number eight because it’s time to get up and get dressed for work and then I have that appointment to close on my house. I hope my new neighbors are in some weird, grifter-type gay mafia and that there is at least one cat lady.

8. I wrote a number 8 to say that I have not scored any Xanax to make me write like this.

I forgot that I had this category entitled “Feelin’ Good Wednesday” so I figured, “Hey. It’s Wednesday. I’m feelin’ good. Why not?” So here we are. Wednesday. The last week has been a ridiculous ride of graduations (Congratulations, nephew! I’m so proud of you, Kyle! I’ll be posting pictures of that event soon!) and seeing my entire family, traveling to Oklahoma for one of the most fun times I’ve had in a while, and losing my makeup bag. THE ENTIRE MAKEUP BAG. This is particularly stressful because I’m carrying a little extra baggage under my eyes and it is not like carrying around some Louis Vuitton luggage. Makeup people out there? If you can spare an extra foundation, blush, eyeliner, eye shadow, etc… please send it to me because I cannot afford to replace all that stuff. Do you need to know my skin coloring? Here. I’m the Mocha one in the middle.

No, not like a reverse Oreo. Like a Zero candy bar. I hope you get that joke and laugh as much as I am right now.

Speaking of food (weren’t we?), I have eaten a metric ton of junk in the last few weeks and need a really good detox. We didn’t have enough time for The Pioneer Woman to cook me one of her famous meals, but we enjoyed a wine and cheese tray so I feel like I’ve done my part to encourage CULTURE and I’m ok with that. Ree and I were taping a show while I was there and we got to discuss shoes. Our giddiness over the topic got a little out of hand when we decided to start naming shoes. Instead of “red pumps” we might have named them something like “Lola” (because whatever Lola wants, well…you know the rest) and a pair of pink metallic stilettos that could kill a buffalo with one whack to the head that we named “Hollywood”. I think they look like shoes that one would wear to a poker game. One who might just have the nickname of “Hollywood” or one who has maybe been to Hollywood and has seen A GOOD TIME.

Instead of the obligatory plane shot, I thought it would be fun to see the shadow of the plane on the ground. Incidentally, I’m not fond of flying so the ground is really appealing when I’m in an enormous flying machine suspended in the air.

All I can say about Ree’s Ranch is holy-incredible-lots-of-green-acres-and-wild-mustangs! Everything was beautiful and relaxing and calm and I needed the R & R just before I make a huge decision. If I haven’t mentioned it here it’s because I’m so nervous about the whole thing that I don’t want to jinx it. In any case, I bought a house. A lovely, darling, well-kept, cute almost-everything-on-my-wishlist house that is just making me weak in the knees. I close on the house this Friday so I was sure to take one of those barf bags off the airplane with me because I’m pretty sure that signing all that paperwork is going to make me hurl.

But, back to the ranch. Here it is in the morning light. In case you ever go visit Ree and her Marlboro Man’s ranch you should be warned about this: you will wake up singing “Morning Has Broken” and you won’t be able to get it out of your head for the rest of the day.

Heaven is not, in fact, Iowa. It is Oklahoma. Right here.

No trip is complete without your rental car breaking down when you’re with Lisa Stone of BlogHer. I mean it. You must try to swerve and miss every road kill carcass on the highway and then inadvertently run over a piece of metal which blows out your tire. And then you must pull off the road in front of a house where a guy named Larry rushes to your aid and grabs the extra tire and the jack and does it himself. You just MUST. It’s an adventure if you don’t! You must also bring Larry a case of root beer and some vanilla ice cream so he can be rewarded with root beer floats!

As part of your adventure, you must covertly snap a picture of Lisa, she of the BlogHer fame, while she gets down on ground to supervise Root Beer Larry.

Suffice to say, the time spent at the ranch was wonderful and a much needed rest for me. The end of the school year is nigh and doing my usual Whirling Dervish routine becomes, as usual for me, a bit tiresome. With all that the last year has brought (and even some of 2010!) I am ready for a break, a rest, a new direction, an unexpected sunrise, and love. I’m completely ready to let love rule. Or as Lenny Kravitz says, “Leeeeeet loooooooove ruuuuuule.” I am devoted to being a happy person, saying YES to everything, and finding beauty in anything I am allowed to lay my eyes upon.

These teacups at the ranch were just so dainty and pretty that I couldn’t help but capture their stillness.

So, get ready 2010. I hope you’re prepared for the awesomeness that I expect from you. There is a break in the clouds for me and some sun is shining through right smack down on top of me. The universe is being kind and it would be foolish not to accept it.

Morning has broken. Indeed.

Really, I’m not one to whine about things. Not entirely openly, that is. But, today is one of those days when I wonder just how everything will get done and what state I’ll be in by the end of it. How much I have to give to my work and my students and my staff is weighing heavily right now because of other things. They just seem too heavy right now.

Last week I was given some interview questions to be featured on a site focusing on women’s health. It’s a government run site and one of the people who works there asked about my own health and how to stay healthy amidst the depression and anxiety in my life, whether it’s mine or my family’s. I remember thinking, “Hmm. They must have been reading very carefully to pick up on that since I don’t make it the focus of what I write about.” and then, “God, I just want to scream from the rooftops about how hard it is to handle it all.”

Right now the biggest thing I’m grappling with is how to purchase a house without the benefit of the equity in the home I still own. It’s tied up legally and there’s no getting at it to help with the down payment so I’m scraping (no, literally, scraping, it together and holding onto every extra dime I can find) it up and doing it unconventionally. That doesn’t even factor in how to get moved with all the stuff my mom has accumulated over the years. Most of the stuff in this house I live in right now doesn’t belong to me because I left it all behind in the home I shared with my husband. And holy shitballs, I have so much stuff to replace. No working vaccuum, no lawn mower, not enough towels or garbage cans or storage boxes. The suckage of this predicament is wearing me down. Every day it’s something new. “Can you get us this paperwork?” or “You know you have to pay a full year of homeowner’s insurance before we can give you this home loan, right?”

There are a few good things, though. A few things that happened to make this process smoother. For instance, the day I needed to give the owner a check for earnest money I actually had it. A panel I’ve been on for over a year that promised $1,000 to me for services showed up in the mail just the day before. “How much do I have to give you for earnest money?” I naively asked. “It’s usually $1,000.” she replied. It made my heart leap that for once, FOR ONCE, I had just what I needed in that moment.

The bad things are outweighing it, though. My mother is very sick and we spent the better part of Mother’s Day in the ER. She was scared and I had to make a decision to take her. In that early afternoon moment, she could not make it herself.

But the good! The good is that I found a house where she can have her own bedroom and her own bathroom. That’s a comfort. Knowing I can work hard, scraping together what I need to be able to give her some solace and peace and a home. It’s that very thing I have to hold onto right now as opposed to screaming that IT’S MY TURN FOR SOMETHING GOOD. That’s a selfish thought. I hate it about myself.

Big stuff. It’s all weighing on me. I have to have some peace about it soon and make it through. I really really want it to be my turn.

Sometimes, when things come out of my son’s mouth I am a little surprised. The normal teenage stuff doesn’t shock me. I hear that stuff all day long at work. He’s fifteen and he’s very good at it. He can’t help himself. Most of what he talks about anyway are things like Naruto and why Hungarian goulash is the Devil’s handiwork, but occasionally he throws me for a loop. Morgan caught me watching MTV’s “Teen Mom” series tonight and asked, “Why are you watching the depravity of the downfall of teen moms who refuse to listen to their parents?” At first, I thought, “How on earth did he just utter that fabulous sentence?” and “Dude! He totally used depravity the correct way! How does he know that word!?” and finally my brain said, “Stop saying dude and totally. You sound like a depraved teenager.”

The best part about being young is being able to be random and spontaneous and the joy of being completely irresponsible. I have no idea what that’s all about.

This inspirational quote came from my friend, Becky, when I finished post-grad work.

I’m not fond of watching reality television at all and when I do it’s because Mallory tells me that something is so unbelievably ridiculous that I should watch it because it bears no resemblance at all to real life. I’ve also never been keen on watching movies that are so close to my own experiences because they hurt too much. The last thing I want to do is watch the very things I’m going through or things I’ve struggled through so I keep them at bay.

And here’s the thing about the show Teen Mom: it’s got to be really hard for those girls, but when I see them all glossed up I just don’t want to watch it anymore because none of my teen parenthood was glossed up. It was messy and dirty and we were poor. Of all the Nothing I see those girls have, my Nothing was much worse. I don’t even like to admit this but at times we were even homeless and had to stay with friends. During that time, I had no desire to watch an After School Special on teens who had sex and then considered abortion, adoption, or raising a baby, or Mary Stuart Masterson in Immediate Family, or Molly Ringwald in For Keeps. Years later, I had difficulty even watching Juno. Eventually, I watched them and they were not much better than the reality of actually raising a child by myself.

I know I was stupid back then. I’m not going to gloss over that. But when I watch these girls I wonder if they know we can see them. That we can watch them primp in the mirror while getting ready to go out (and have their mothers babysit while they throw infantile tantrums about how they wanna have fun!) (Does Cyndi Lauper know she’s being quoted so often of late?) and talk about how hard it is to be a mom when they’d much prefer hanging out with friends. They know this right? That we can see them?

It makes me want to list all the things it is: waiting for food stamps to come in the mail, hoping your checks clear when you pay the bills, staying in on weekends, telling your child that she can’t have another doll, cutting your own hair, not attending birthday parties because you’d have to buy presents, being looked down upon, clipping coupons obsessively, siting on the floor because you don’t have a couch, dumpster diving for furniture, using dull steak knives, keeping fans running because the A/C costs too much, and in a really big way just simply doing without.

All the things it’s not: needs that get immediately fulfilled, free babysitters, time to reflect and think about all the choices and decisions that get made, looking into the camera and succinctly describing your feelings, excessive time in the mirror doing your hair (say hello to the ponytail and stick with it because there’s no way you’re getting a free moment to run a brush through that rat’s nest), friends who still come around to visit and forgive you easily because you can no longer go out and have fun, and then, of course, the fadeout music. There definitely is no fadeout music.

Depravity, if you will, just doesn’t have a theme song.

It’s Saturday and normally there are a thousand things to try and get finished before Monday morning smacks me in the face but there is an unimaginable amount of paperwork that I’m going through right now for something that I want to talk about and am not going to talk about just yet. But that’s not why I’m here. I’m here (in the little box on your computer screen) (or in the little box of your Internet-capable phone) because I am the ultimate procrastinator and because I am waiting for my Mallory’s moving truck to arrive and strip me of her belongings because she is moving out and buying her own house.

WHEN DID ALL THAT CRAP HAPPEN?

To add to the fun I have been nursing a strange combination allergy/cold that I’m diagnosing myself and calling in prescriptions as if I’m the Queen of Fantastico (a real place, I’m sure) and yet, somehow, my doctor is letting them be filled. Only the magic of the Neti Pot has made it possible for me to be able to get in the shower each day and start the routine of getting myself ready to leave the house. This has come with a weird side effect of having a red spot on my nose. I’m not sure how the sound in my ears has come to create a muffled yet piercing noise, but I can’t quite hear well during this illness which I’m calling The Dirty, Mite-Infested Curtains Are Trying To Kill Me. The only reason I’m blaming the curtains is because I was trying to shake them out and make them look presentable. Why I was doing this, I do not know. Not many things can be explained away easily as of late. For example (and it appears that an example is necessary at this point), I made bacon in a wok this morning. Why did I do that? Because a wok was readily available and I didn’t feel like looking for a regular pan.

Sidenote: wok-fried bacon is genius.

Sidenote, the second: this entire post seems to be a sidenote.

So! I’m on a lot of medicine, right? And I am sleeping a lot because I doze off while doing the most mundane things and my hearing is questionable right now. To top it off, I foolishly answered the door this morning while in a haze between sleep and awake to some Jehovah’s Witnesses to whom I was probably rude.

Her: (mumble, mumble, thick accent) Good morning, this is blah blah my husband. (Mumble mumble I have Skittles in my mouth mumble mumble) Are you a Bible owner and reader?

Me: Both.

Her: Great! Can I read some of the Bible to you? (flips pages to a passage)

Me: No.

Then, I shut the door in their faces. That’s not like me, but I am physically unwell and emotionally fragile at the moment. I really needed to haul ass to get some cleaning done, finish waking up, and get ready to get Mallory moved. She brought three strapping men with her to help move the couch set I’m giving her (and it’s only two years old) (I’m a really nice mom to give her that stuff). Things just seemed to spiral from there.

And then? She arrived home to my house to collect her things. Clothes, school projects, pictures, makeup, computer.

And then? They moved it all really quickly and efficiently.

And then? She got her truck loaded up and grabbed her keys, kissed me goodbye, and drove away.

And now?

I am quite the mess.